A Louisiana boy finds a home in Tennessee

They say that change is the only constant in life and that is becoming more apparent as the calendar changes to 60 for me in a few weeks.

I started noticing it when I turned 45 and couldn’t find my cologne, British Sterling, in stores any more. At my then wife’s suggestion, I switched to Paul Sebastian.

But when I turned 55, and newly divorced, I couldn’t find a bottle of Paul Sebastian for less than $60 in stores. eBay came to the rescue and thankfully, I can still find a bottle of Paul Sebastian after shave for under $15.

Charmin was my toilet paper of choice since I was a teen and my dad started bringing home multipacks from work. It was the simple, 1-ply style, which served me well. I’m not sure when, but they stopped making 1-ply, or at least the stores I used quit stocking it, and I found I was using way more 2-ply than I did one ply.

That’s when Cottonelle came into my life after I moved to the ridge. Cheaper than Charmin but as good as Charmin ever was.

It’s the same with paper towels. Dad brought an obscene number of rolls of Bounty home from work when I was a kid and I became loyal to that brand.

As my life simplified after the divorce, I found the large multipacks offered at grocers and discount stores impractical because I had a smaller amount of storage space. At about the same time, stores started stocking single or double packs, so I would just buy one roll and make sure I always had a spare in the pantry.

Now that I live in the country and my shopping options are more limited, I have found it impossible to locate a single roll of Bounty that isn’t that aggravating “select-a-size” type.

The local independent grocer in Charlotte has come to my rescue with a “premium” option for its store brand paper towels, though. It’s 70 cents cheaper than a roll of Bounty, has no feminine floral print on it and works as a sufficient substitute for the rare times when I run out of Kleenex or toilet paper.

I drive an 18 year-old car because it’s paid for and it still runs great.

It’s a Toyota, of course, and has more than 276,000 miles on it. I bought it 6 years ago with 150,000 miles on it and my goal is to get at least 300,000 or more miles on it before I buy another car.

It’s a good car, but it does have its quirks.

Like the driver’s window. It stopped working three years ago. Just refused to roll down. A month later, it started working again. I never found out why. But it worked like a charm until six months ago, when it up and quit again.

My plan was to take it to a shop to get it fixed, but something always came up that required my attention (and my cash).

I’m working really hard to pay off my house, so cash is always tight. Replacing the window motor or carriage could cost anywhere from $200 to $1,200 depending on the shop. (I’ve called several.)

A new transmission (technically, it’s a used transmission) was the the first thing that bumped the window from my priority list. New tires for my dad’s truck, a gift when he decided not to drive any more last spring, were next.

Then there were new tires for the car, skirting for the house, new steps on the deck to pass codes, dues for the half dozen Masonic organizations I belong to, topped off by a busted water pipe and my attempts to better weatherize my water system.

It’s been really cold this week, with snow added as an accent. I drove the truck on the long holiday weekend and again on Tuesday and Wednesday in part because the roads were slick and because the driver’s window rolls down which makes getting in the parking garage for work much easier. (I had to unbuckle the seat belt, open the door and lean back to use my access card with the car.)

Today, with the temperature below freezing for two days in a row and fears that letting the car sit idle for the better part of a week, I used my car. Besides, its heater works better than the truck’s.

As the side window fogged up during the early part of my drive , I hit the window down button to clear the moisture and lo and behold, the window rolled down. And then it rolled back up.

A miracle, no doubt.

It worked great as I entered and left the garage, too.

God only knows how long it will continue to work this time, but now I can spend my cash on other things — like my water system, which froze again today.

If it’s possible to love an appliance, I never really cared much for my washing machine.

The washer came with a dryer in a package deal that fit my budget at the time five years ago when I was focused on paying off my debt. But it didn’t do a good job of getting stains out of my shirts, so I put a thermometer to the water when it was on the Warm setting. 72 degrees.

The repair guy who came out the next day said that’s how they build them these days. It runs the cold water for a bit and then a short run with hot water.

Hot water at my apartment was too hot for my shirts and pants, and the heater was behind a locked door that I didn’t have a key that would allow me to adjust it, so there were times after I dribbled soy sauce or salad dressing on me, that some shirts had to be washed two or three times.

I opted for a tankless water heater in my house, but the cold water problem was even worse since there was a 20-second lag from the time the washer switched to hot and hot water arrived at the washer. I started looking for money in the budget for a better model, but the budget was tight.

Then one day, while looking at the red glow of the temperature readout on the tank, it hit me. I can adjust the temperature down to 98 degrees, which is what most consider warm water.

So now, when I wash my permanent press, I set the washer temp setting to Hot and the water tank to 98 and you never see the remnants of soy sauce or salad dressing on my shirts any more.

I am at my limit for passwords. I am no longer able to have a different password for each thing I need to have a password for.

There is only so much the human mind can hold, then it starts dumping old things like names of my elementary school teachers to make room for yet another new word that’s at least 8 characters long, contains a mixture of upper and lowercase letters along with at least one number and a special character that isn’t a period.

There is only one thing left for you to do – hunt down the hackers and make them stop.

I’ve seen some of your budgets. You can do this.

Just don’t buy the latest upgrades and new technology this year. Focus your IT resources into finding the hackers who would steal my passwords and make an offer they can’t refuse.

I know it can be done. I watch The Blacklist and The Blind Spot.

Hackers are evil. Make them stop it.

Then again, you might be the evil ones for making me, who has no living pets, come up with a unique password every other fortnight. If you stopped that, I might think better about hackers as human beings.

I was on the interstate entrance ramp when a taxi cut me off and then hit its brakes. I slammed on mine and avoided rear-ending him, but when traffic started moving again, my car wouldn’t go.

It was dead. No power. No clock. The transmission wouldn’t shift to park so I could try to restart it.

Shit, I muttered, forgetting my anger at the taxi and concentrating on my car.

I can’t afford to buy a new car right now. So I had to think.

Transmission won’t shift. I pulled out my pocket knife and popped the tab off on the console, depressed the button underneath with my knife and moved the shifter to park.

How’d I know to do that? 1982. My 1981 T-Bird. I ran over a school crossing sign with it in the middle of the night, back in the day when mothers weren’t mad and I thought I was about the best drunk driver on the planet.

The tow truck driver showed me how to make a transmission shift when it doesn’t want to.

Back on the interstate ramp, I tried to start the car now that the transmission was in park. Nothing. I pressed the button again and pushed the shifter to neutral, opened the door and pushed the car to the left side of the road.

As I was bending down to pull the hood latch, a police officer rolled up and asked if I was OK. I recounted the story of the taxi and the sudden death of my car.

“I need to look under the hood. I think my battery is messed up,” I told him.

How’d I know that? 1976. My ’69 Ford station wagon.

I was paying for college and working part time but my money wouldn’t stretch like I needed it to. The battery died and I needed a new one, so I bought the cheapest, not knowing they come in different sizes.

The battery I bought was too small for my car. So I looped some scrap wire from work around it to hold it into place and headed to school. It worked great until I turned from Menard Street onto Audubon Drive. The wire broke in the turn, the battery shifted and shorted out on an engine bracket.

The car died in mid turn and white smoke started to pour out from under the hood.

It looked like a new pope was elected, only I’m not Catholic or a cardinal, so I couldn’t vote.

I threw open the hood and yanked the battery from the bracket. The smoke stopped. I used my pocket knife and some electricians’ tape (this was before the advent of duct tape) and put the battery back in place (and extra tape on those engine brackets).

I eventually figured out I could use the scrap wire to replace the wires that fried when the battery shorted out. Once I was done, I went back to the fraternity house for a drink. It was 10 a.m.

Back on the interstate ramp, the officer told me I needed to get to the right shoulder since there was more room to work and it was safer. He stopped traffic and told me to drive while he pushed.

Thankfully, the ramp was downhill. In short order, I was on the right shoulder and I let it coast to the bottom of the hill.

The officer had to be in court, so once he helped me get to safety, he was on his way, telling me to call the station if I needed a tow truck and dispatch was waiting to help.

I thanked him again and as he drove away, I popped the hood open and saw right away that the battery had shifted when I slammed on the brakes. The positive wire had pulled loose from the battery terminal.

I grabbed some wooden paint stirrers I keep in my car and a scrap piece of 1×4 lumber from the back seat floor board. I used the stirrers to put the connector back on top of the post and drove it in place with the 1 x 4.

The car started and I was on my way. To work. I wasn’t even late because it took less than 5 minutes for me to figure out the problem and fix it since I’d been there before when I was younger and somewhat dumber.